Trump signs proclamation adding $100K annual fee for H-1B visa applications

PFF!

(Prepare For Flagging)

Perhaps take your startup to India ?

As a startup you wanted to underpay people that you import from overseas? There's a lot about Trump immigration policy that I do not like but this one I think is totally appropriate.

If you read the articles you'll see that even Microsoft is telling people to get back to the US to avoid this fee. Not even big companies want to pay it. You have forgotten what the H1B visa was supposed to be for. It was to bring in experts that could not be sourced to locally. What it's turned into is people paying for cheap labor from overseas to come here. There is lots of locals with lots of experience and knowledge and skills but too many companies are unwilling to pay the wages that they're worth. So they'll bring in subpar people, who are not experts in their field, to do the work. It leads to a mediocre work product as well.

Because honestly, if they were really an expert with domain-specific knowledge that is difficult to source locally an extra hundred thousand dollars is pennies compared to the profit that they would bring.

Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee (161 points, 209 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877

No, I don't want to underpay imported people. I'm not talking about teams of low-skilled people. You don't know my situation, so I'll explain. I work in a startup that requires a specific ML computer vision skillset. And we are in the surgery space. I found a brilliant person who is a master at computer vision, loves the medical field, and is willing to take a +6 figure salary and equity. I tried to find someone like that stateside and couldn't. He wants to live here and would be a great addition to the country. He's in Canada now, has been for years. Unfortunately he's still there now because of the recent travel ban for those born in certain countries.

Thing is, I would pay $100k extra to have him in office. In my case it's moot because of the travel ban. My point was, this whole thing simply benefits the companies that can afford it - google, meta, amazon etc, who happen to be big contributors to the administration. $100k will not stop them from hiring foreign talent, but it may stop companies like mine. Flagship companies might be psyched about this.